On March 11, Ball State Athletic director of athletics Jeff Mitchell announced the hiring of Andy Stoots as the next head coach for the Cardinals’ soccer team.
Stoots is coming off of a four-year stretch as an associate head coach for the Missouri Tigers. Prior to the Tigers’ job, he was also on the coaching staff for the Louisville Cardinals and Minnesota Gophers where his teams were a part of multiple NCAA tournament berths.
Stoots may have just been announced as head coach, but his focus is well beyond just that as he has already focused on some of the growing points for this season and where he wants the Cardinals to go.
“We want to push them and challenge [the players] to get outside their comfort zone,” Stoots said.
It is more than just focusing on the players though as this is also Stoots’s first head coaching gig.
“Being a first-time head coach, there are things that we’re going to learn, no doubt about it,” Stoots said. “I’ve been lucky to work for a lot of head coaches so I do feel prepared in that way to jump in and get going.”
Stoots comes into Muncie one year removed from the Cardinals missing the MAC tournament after making it the past three consecutive years. But that is in the past he suggested as he has all eyes forward to making it back to the Mid-American Conference (MAC) Tournament this year.
“I haven’t really talked to them about last year, I’m new here,” he said, “I think when you come into a new team and a new culture, there's a lot of learning that takes place. I told them, ‘I'm not really interested in talking about last year.’ I'm more interested in thinking and going forward. We’ve done a lot of competing and training. We've done a lot of physical battling in training, and I think that's something that we want to do from the very beginning, is set that competitive edge.”
Beyond the team, Stoots also credited Mitchell and Ball State President Geoffrey Mearns.
“I’ve always been a big proponent of you choose people, not places, and that reeled me in,” he said. “Then when I came and got on campus and saw how nice the campus was, and met President Mearns and what a great, great person he was. It was the people first and foremost.”
Contact Rylan Crum with comments at rylan.crum@bsu.edu or on X @RylanCrum
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